(1) Select several imagistic works by Williams, such as “The Red Wheelbarrow” or “Burning the Christmas Greens,” that alter substance with a flash of surprise or an unforeseen gestalt. Compare his visual method to that of Salvador Dali, Jackson Pollock, Edward Hopper, Willem De Kooning, Marcel Duchamp, and other painters, sculptors, and muralists ofhis day.
(2) Summarize Williams’ commentary on art in “The Desert Music.” Contrast his purpose to that of T. S. Eliot, Hart Crane, Ezra Pound, or Marianne Moore.
(3) Compare Williams’ view of the ugliness, monotony, and crassness of everyday life with similar themes and subjects in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, O. E. Rolvaag’s Giants in the Earth, Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, Robert Frost’s “‘Out, out . . .,” and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.
(4) How does Williams elicit eroticism in “Portrait of a Lady”?
(5) Is Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” poetry or not? Defend your answer.
